SEO tips for small business website
As a web developer, I'm often asked by business owners asking about SEO. Many sign up with SEO providers and pay hundreds a month. This is not for everyone (thought some do need to go to this extent). Before you approach SEO companies make sure you have the basics right.
Here are my eight tips for basic SEO on your website:
Create great content: If you have an amazing product or service people will find you and Google will bring up your site as a result.
Keywords or phrases in your content: Make a list of words of phrases you think your potential visitors will look for in search engine, work from a list to place these phrases throw-out your website. If you can, use a copywriter.
Heading are very important – think of a sentence more than your business name. For example instead of Welcome to Webby Web Design - Melbourne web design for small businesses.
Meta tags: these are back end tags which visitors can’t see but search engines can. You need:
Page Titles (very important not to only have ‘home’ but have something like ‘Bayside wedding photographer l xxx photography l photos for weddings, special occasions l home) make sure it is 50-60 characters max.
Site Description - 150 to 160 characters max.
Domain name is also important. The obvious one is your business name but you might have a name without mentioning your industry. for example photography service called by photographer name www.yourname.com.au . Best to add a parked domain name which includes your service for this example – baysideweddingphotography.com.au.
Images – search engines can not read images, only text. Thought images are very important for site graphics & to display products and services, you need to balance between text & photos to accommodate a good look but also SEO. In any case include a relevant description to all images (Alt) so search engine can read them.
Analytics - If you don’t have a Google Analytics account – get one and link to your site. You can learn allot from Google Analytics and implement for better results. Fro example how do people find you, search terms they used...
Remember – SEO takes time....The more unique visitors you have, the more popular you are considered and rank better. Send links to customers, family & friends and encourage them to visit your site.
